Choirs of Chaos
by People On Packets
Summary: A short portrait of a planets transformation into a music hall of chaos and the mad composer who leads it.   Feed back Appreciated!


The Choirs of Chaos

The dark hall shivered. From outside it looked magnificent - bone white buttresses and spires spiked into the sky. There was not a taint, a blemish on any stone. Rituals ensured there never would be. This purity endowed the cathedral with a sense of deep perversion. A smiling edifice of horror. Inside, no hallway was the same - ever. Every minute brought irregular undulations - corridors opened and closed, doors leading to chapels became torture pits, libraries replaced rooms of fire. The nature of the cathedral was the nature of chaos and to navigate it, ones mind had to be a termite mound of insanity.

In its highest parapet, a counsel of Chaos Champions gathered.

A blinding light fell upon the room, bright as the cathedral itself. In its wake stood an entrant, clothed in alabaster robes and armour of white and silver. Blond locks latched onto his pale face. His eyes were vacant orbs. Blinded.

Tension silenced the room. High Tyrants of Chaos, twisted, rotted and contorted by their insanity, shivered at this image of beauty. Finally, Calthiaar of the Word Bearers rose.

"Lord Severien it is an..Honor to be your guest. But for what purpose have you summoned us?"

Severien's words slipped from his lips in a poetic hum. His body, its movements and motions, vibrated with a deep musical resonance. In his presence, senses melded and flared. One could feel his words and hear his gesticulations. The resulting pool of sensation mired those around him in a daze.

Unlike other champions of pleasure, Severien was obsessed with creation. He was the greatest composer of his time. Imperial dogma, forced his work into secrecy. When it was discovered, a tribunal ordered his compositions burned and him lobotomized. A message to all who would create anything not dedicated to the works of the God Emperor.

Severien was restrained - his eyes clamped open - as his masterworks were burned. At his side, inquisitors sharpened their knives and screws. A reminder of the bits of brain to be torn out. He would be an idiot free to walk the streets - an example to the masses.

The night before his lobotomy, madness savaged his mind. Slicing his arms for blood, Severien composed a masterpiece unlike anything before - a grand opera dedicated to pleasure, chaos and the destruction of man.

Slaanesh noticed. Revolts threw the planet into chaos and mobs shattered Severien's prison. Great daemons tore threw the warp trumpeting Severien's masterpiece. Their bombastic horns bellowing tunes cut with subliminal messages from the Dark Prince himself. For Severien, Slaanesh willed magnificent gifts - imposing physical stature, wildly increased senses, and a grand demonic army. Severien tore the throat from his world - so it would never speak against him. Every citizen became slaves in his grand Opera houses, music halls and theatres - built to the scale of mountains. From their great pipes, horns and amplifiers, blasted compositions both heard and unheard. Millions were tortured - their screams flowing through magnificent pipes. In some halls, permanent ways to the warp were constructed. Filling its chaotic storms with ungodly music.

Then, in honor to Slaneesh, he blinded himself. Not because of the ugliness and physical deformities he was birthed with. But to display his unworthiness to his sublime God. He could create masterworks of music - but felt unfit to ever gaze upon his gods beauty. For this, Slaanesh bestowed Severien with transcendent beauty and ensured no mutilation would scar his body. A beauty Severien had always craved and would now - never see. An irony Slaanesh enjoyed.

Severien's planet was a massive siren - calling out to human, eldar and daemon alike. Its notes capable of slipping through dimensions, into the webway and scattered throughout the galaxy. Everyday, the unwary followed those notes. Imperial armadas drawn to slaughter and slavery. Craftworlds rendered into tortured choirs. It was even whispered the most perverse and desperate of the dark eldar flew by - chancing their souls for the tortured choruses echoing from its pipes.

Now the champions of chaos sat in the lone chamber of silence on his world. Paralyzed by Severien's silence.

"I wished to tell you - that your voices have always pleased me."


End file.
